Free Some Wildflower In My Heart by Jamie Langston Turner

play yard engaged in a game of kickball. The sidewalk led me in that direction, and as I approached I heard a slim, well-built boy positioned near third base shout, “Here, Skeet! Throw it! He’s goin’ home!” A stocky outfielder hurled the ball to the speaker, who caught it cleanly, then smoothly whirled and launched it toward the runner.
    I marveled at the boy. He wore green denim jeans, I recall, and his hair was a shock of dark auburn. He could not have been more than ten or eleven, yet he had the graceful coordination and power of a natural athlete. The ball hit the runner squarely behind the knees a few feet from home plate, and the entire outfield erupted into cheers of triumph. The boy who had thrown the ball received the congratulatory thumps of his teammates appreciatively but, it seemed to me, without self-importance. I heard them call him Bennet. Whether his first or last name, I could not tell, but it further endeared the boy to me, for it called to mind the main characters of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice , the Bennet family.
    Jane Austen is perhaps the author whose works I love best, although I personally favor Emma over Pride and Prejudice . I have long admired Austen’s unmatched genius for transforming the small business of everyday life into memorable scenes for her readers, painting detailed character cameos with her fine brush of words. As a young woman, I had entered the world of the Woodhouses, the Dashwoods, the Bennets, and the Elliots as a means of escaping my grandfather, and for the periodic sanctuary they afforded, I remain grateful. Austen’s orderly world was a balm, the temporary domestic troubles of her characters a respite.
    But I must return to the boys on the playground at Emma Weldy Elementary School. There is little else in my opinion as completely satisfying and fascinating as a boy—not a man, but a boy. The potential for tenderness balanced against the unfolding of physical might, the unflinching frankness, the lightness of emotional baggage, the unerring instinct for fairness and truth—in sum, when he reaches adulthood, a man is well past his peak, for this was reached between the ages of three and twelve.
    I watched the boys at play until the shriek of a whistle marked the end of their liberation and they were herded inside. The auburn-haired boy, Bennet, loped along ahead of the others as if eager now for other challenges inside the yellow brick building.
    Instead of continuing on my way through town as I had intended, I turned in at the school gate and found my way to the principal’s office to inquire concerning staff employment. Until the moment that I had seen Bennet and the other boys at play, it had never occurred to me to seek employment at this or any other school. My brief experience with schools had left me no fond sentiments.
    On my way into the office, a harried young woman in a white uniform almost bowled me over as she stormed through the doorway, pushed past me, and ran down the corridor in the direction from which I had come. The secretary, who was occupied on the telephone, cast a quizzical glance toward the momentary hubbub at the doorway but continued nodding into the receiver. I set my suitcase down beside a potted plant, and running my hand down the buttons of my dark suit jacket, which was too warm for a September day in South Carolina, I walked directly into the principal’s office to state my business.
    â€œI have come to ask about a position of employment at your school,” I said.
    The principal of Emma Weldy at that time was a portly woman in her late forties named Mrs. Edgecombe, who stood up from behind her large oak desk and tilted her head backward until her spectacles had apparently brought me into focus. She wore an expression of impatience, though taking time to study me thoroughly from head to toe. I would have been only mildly surprised had she requested me to turn around slowly or to open my